“So what do you think, Detective?”
Detective Sandra Galanos looked down at the bullet-riddled body lying in the wreckage of a small apartment.
“Well, I think he’s dead, Jim.”
“Oh har-har. How do you think it happened?”
The detective’s eyes flicked back up at the uniformed officer leaning in the doorway. Jim Molan was a good cop; not the brightest lightbulb in the precinct, but he was dependable and got the job done.
“Ok, I think our victim came home at the wrong time,” replied Galanos, picking her way slowly through the debris. “Look at the blood, at the way he’s lying. So he walks in, I’m thinking there’s a tussle, he gets thrown over the upturned dresser, and bam! Our victim – what did you say his name was? French, wasn’t it? D’Courcy? Anyway, he’s dead in a heartbeat. Not even a chance to say ‘Sacre Bleu‘ and wave a white flag.”
“Jesus, Sandra, you can’t say shit like that. The man’s family might be here any minute.”
“They don’t pay me for sweet-talk, Jimmy.”
Galanos carefully picked up a few pages strewn about the room, noting the company letterhead.
“There’s a lot of these corporate communications,” she missed. “I mean, who prints out emails and stores them at home? Know what I’m saying?”
“You mean we’re looking at some kind of corporate espionage?”
Sandra shrugged, squinting at the bland grey logo imprinted at the bottom of each email chain.
Nash Advanced Applied Chemical Engineering and Development. With a name that boring it’s probably pharmaceuticals – or chemical weapons.
The detective’s phone buzzed and the tall woman grunted in annoyance, then rolled her eyes and sighed when she saw the number on the screen.
“Hey Captain, yes I’m here,” she answered. “Yes, Jimmy’s here too. What? No, I haven’t been drinking any caffeine today, I remember what the doctor said. What are you, my mother? Look, it’s a pretty standard home invasion-murder combo. The victim worked some high-end chemical engineering company, he might have been trying to sell corporate secrets or something. I’ll call you when I know more.”
Galanos flicked her screen in annoyance and cut the call, and was left staring at her own reflection as the mobile went dark. The woman who glowered back was in her mid-forties, the black hair shot through with grey and Greek profile that was already wrinkled from worry lines. Galanos looked at the mirror image of the heavy bags under each eye.
She tried not to think about the empty energy drink cans rolling around the bottom of her car. God I need a drink.
“You ok, Sandra?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, Jim. You go, I can finish up here. I’ll check with these chemical engineering guys tomorrow morning, see if I can find what the perpetrators were after.”
“You gonna go get some sleep before you do all this?”
“Sleep’s overrated, Jim. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Sandra let her eyes wander over the corporate reception area as she waited for her appointment. Everything around her – the desks, the carpet, even the muted abstract paintings on the walls, struck the detective as trying to be as drab and uninspiring as possible.
What are these guys trying to hide? I’ve seen FBI offices with more spark.
Sandra was still tossing up between human cloning or live animal testing when a corporate liaison officer came to greet her.
“Good morning, Detective Galanos,” said the young woman, flashing a brief, warm smile before her face melted back into a safely neutral expression. “We are sorry to keep you waiting. We have all learnt of Engineer D’Courcy’s tragedy this morning and have offered all relevant staff grief counselling if they file the correct mental health reports.”
“Well, that’s… good?” replied Sandra, privately wondering if the young woman had attended some kind of training seminar to achieve such a blank face. “I’m investigating the circumstances of Mr D’Courcy’s murder, and I’d like to ask a few questions. Do you tell me what D’Courcy was working on before he died?”
The corporate drone flinched and Galanos saw the fear in the young woman’s eyes.
“I, uh – I don’t think I’m allowed to…”
“Was it something that might have been a motivation for someone to hurt him?”
The corporate drone tried to formulate a response but then stuttered into silence, looking pleadingly at the wide double doors separating the reception area from the rest of the engineering company.
As if on cue, the doors burst open and an athletic, middle aged man strode angrily towards the pair.
“Stop right there! Carly, don’t say a word until we have a lawyer present. As for you, Detective, we don’t have to show you a thing until you come back here with a subpoena.”
“And you are?” asked Galanos calmly, rising from her seat and offering her hand.
The man glared at the detective’s hand as if expecting to see a microphone attached to it. Tall, with dark curly hair and dusky skin, Galanos examined the handsome face and wondered where the gravelly edge to the man’s accent came from.
“I promise I’m not going to bite, Mr-?”
“Ivonak, Michael Ivonak,” replied the man, grimacing a little as he shook the detective’s hand. “CEO of this company.”
“Detective Sandra Galanos, Baltimore PD. I’m just following up with some routine questions, Mr Ivonak. You have my condolences for your company’s loss – I’m sure D’Courcy was well-loved.”
Michael deflated a little at Galanos’s words, wrinkling his mouth in embarrassment.
“Carly, why don’t you go take a break?” he asked the corporate drone, and Galanos noted how the young woman’s shoulders slumped in relief as she picked herself up and scurried out of the room.
“Ok, let’s have an informal chat,” continued Michael, draping himself across the seat while his dark eyes stayed fixed on the detective. “But the moment I feel like this investigation is straying from it’s purpose, I’m tossing you out until you get a subpoena.”
Watch this one, thought Galanos, and briefly wondered if she might have found the man’s intensity attractive, two decades ago. She immediately dismissed the errant idea.
That part of your life is over, old woman. There’s no going back.
Shaking the guilty thought away, Sandra took out her notebook and flipped through her the pages.
“So can you tell me what type of work Mr D’Courcy was doing for Nash Advanced Applied…”
Michael waved the question away.
“No need to quote the full name, we just call it Nash Engineering,” he answered. “As for D’Courcy, he was working on one of our most cutting edge projects, which no, I’m not required to tell you about. It’s not yet time to release our product to the market.”
“Do you think D’Courcy had any reason to harbor resentment towards you or the Company? I’m sure you’ve already been contacted by now with a notification that the victim had a great deal of corporate correspondence at his house.”
“And our lawyers have already been in touch to request the return of all confidential documents,” replied Ivonak, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. The pair held for a minute, then the well-dressed man sighed and ran a hand through tousled hair.
“Ok, yes, I guess I can tell you that D’Courcy was never the same after his daughter died. It effected his work, to say the least. Led him to make some… unreasonable requests regarding the project he was working on.”
“What kind of requests?”
“The kind bound by corporate confidentiality, Detective. Next question.”
“D’Courcy was murdered, Mr Ivonak. Are your corporate secrets worth murdering for?”
Galanos hoped to see some grimace, some twist in the tall man’s mouth that signified guilt. To her disappointment Michael simply threw his head back and laughed, relaxing back into his chair.
“I’m sorry to burst your bubble, Detective, but Nash Engineering is a company that deals in products worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If I had known D’Courcy was going to turn on us, I have more than adequate – and totally legal – means to silence him for the rest of his life. Why would I risk going to jail for murder? It’s like asking Bill Gates to go shoplifting.”
Galanos looked hard at the self-satisfied grin, and was forced to admit that Michael was right.
“Well then who would want to murder D’Courcy?” she replied.
The CEO rubbed his chin and looked thoughtfully at the detective.
“There was one group we ran into the year before last, they go by the name of VOC. Corporate espionage group. Raiders, really. Some ex-military, others with a history on the Dark Web. Their groupies fancy them as corporate whistle-blowers, but to be honest, it’s a chop shop for stolen intellectual property. These guys have international clients with deep pockets and no qualms about where the next big product comes from.”
“So this VOC group, do you think they would have murdered Mr D’Courcy? How did you find them last time?”
Michael shrugged. “Got lucky, the staff member couldn’t take the strain of his own duplicity and had a nervous breakdown. Found a stack of proprietary corporate documents in a storage apartment upstate. Thankfully they didn’t get any sale able secrets out of that fiasco, but it’s possible that they put together enough clues to guess what we were developing, perhaps even strike a deal with D’Courcy over it.”
“Mr Ivonak, it would assist my investigation greatly if you would give me some more information to go on. What was D’Courcy working on? I can assure you of my professional confidentiality.”
“And I have every faith that you would honor that – after you come back with a subpoena,” smiled Michael, rising from his chair and buttoning his jacket. “Until then, Detective, I wish you every luck with your case.”
Bastard, thought Sandra, looking down at her hastily-scribbled notes. So who is this VOC? And what the hell are they making here?
Several hours later, the Detective Galanos jumped when her mobile buzzed hard against her chest.
“Sandra, where are you?” came a familiar voice. “You were supposed to check back at the precinct hours ago!”
“Dammit, Jimmy, I’m kind of in the middle of something here,” she whispered, leaning against the wall of a prefabricated storage unit.
“Unless it’s some kind of caffeine addicts anonymous, I really don’t give a crap. Where are you?”
“Look, I had a word to the head of Nash Engineering. He said the company had been targeted by some kinda extortion outfit a while back, operating out of some storage space. Well I checked D’Courcy’s papers and I found a reference to a storage unit company upstate. I’m here now, just poking around a little.”
“Have you even heard of correct procedure?” snapped the police officer, causing to detective to wince and almost drop her phone. “Do you have any idea what will happen if the Disciplinary Committee gets wind of this? They almost fired you last time!”
“Sorry to make you fret, Jim,” replied Galanos, peering carefully around a corner. “But I might have to cut this short. Three men, armed. Looks like ex-military hardware. You know, I just might need some backup on this.”
“God damn you, Sandra. Calling it in now. Stay put.”
Galanos smiled and put the phone away, relaxing back against the wall and letting the ever-present weariness flow over her.
As if I’d be stupid enough to go up against three suspects armed with military assault weapons. Not after what happened to Tyson.
Unbidden, the memories reached out to drag her back into the shadows, and once again she watched as the heavily-built young man bleed out in the dark alley, his arms shaking as he tried to reach out for her.
”Sandra! God help me, where are you?”
“I’m here, partner. The ambulance is on it’s way. I’m right here, you just hang on.”
“I can’t see anything. Where are you?”
“Right here. Everything’s going to be ok. Don’t worry about the perp, you got him.”
“I can’t see, Sandra. I- I’m scared.”
“No!” shouted Galanos, jerking out of the dream as she felt herself begin to slip down the wall.
“Who’s there?” snapped a voice from around the corner, followed by the sounds of weapons being freed from their straps and holsters.
“Sounds like a woman – she’s hiding behind the storage unit.”
Oh hell. You’ve done it this time. Stupid, tired old woman!
“Baltimore PD!” the detective yelled. “Drop your weapons and lie down on the ground! You are all under arrest!”
“Time to bug out!” snapped another voice that Galanos vaguely placed as northern European. “Waste her and grab the samples!”
Acting on decades of bitterly-earned experience, Galanos flung herself backwards away from the corner as the light prefab metal exploded into fragments, pulling her weapon free as she scrambled up from the floor to return fire. For a single, searing instant, the constant fatigue was gone, her entire world focusing into the gun in her hands and the pulse thundering through her temples.
The shattered metal corner whipped past her vision and three men came into view, a blur of black uniforms and green weapon braces. Two of them were heaving duffel bags onto their backs. The third was raising a shiny black rifle.
Galanos didn’t hesitate. The shot rang through her entire body, but she was already pulling herself back, moving with short, practiced movements until she was out of the range of fire.
“That bitch got Frederich! Kill her!”
“Can’t you hear the sirens? Leave him. If we don’t go now, they’ll get all of us!”
“Alright, go, go, go!”
Galanos held her position, kneeling on the ground with the weapon trained on the ruined corner of the storage unit. After counting to one hundred, the detective slowly, carefully, edged back around the corner.
The pair of armed men were gone, leaving behind the corpse of their companion and contents of his briefcase splayed out across the floor. Galanos’s entire body was still tingling as she checked quickly around the corner and in the shadows of the storage unit. Inside were piles of upturned boxes, transport cases and paperwork bearing the bland Nash Engineering logo.
She jumped a little as her phone buzzed against her chest.
“Sandra! Are you ok?”
“I’m ok, Jim. They got wind of me and opened fire. Took out one but the others ran when they heard the backup. So, uh – thanks for saving my ass.”
“Dammit, Sandra, the Cap is going to have a field day in this one. Hand over the crime scene to the first detective you see and go home. Jesus Christ, get some sleep.”
The detective sighed, feeling her hands tremble as she put the phone away and turned to the dead VOC member. After decades on the beat the woman had learnt to push her feeling down as she examined the clean bullet wound in the young man’s temple.
Male, Caucasian. Mid-twenties, athletic, died clutching his weapon, thought Galanos, ticking off observations as she fumbled through her pockets for evidence gloves. Too tired to keep trying, she looked at the contents of the briefcase scattered before her. One object among the papers and data drives stood out from the rest: a tiny, pink wooden box, with a blobby dandelion painted on top. The small, cheap latch had been broken in the fall, and falling out of the container were some folded-up drawings, a seashell, a coin, and a small lock of hair tied with a bow.
Tired, shaking, an acting on an instinct she couldn’t quite define, Galanos reached over and picked up the tiny keepsake.
The detective’s vision was suddenly fling back, and Galanos wondered if she’d been shot after all, but her thoughts went hazy as she felt herself sinking into a pool of thoughts, sounds and memories that were not her own.
“Pick me up Daddy!”
A little girl’s giggles turned into screams of laughter as strong hands lifted her up and tickled her.
Sunlight was streaming through the leaves, so she could only see glimpses of the face above her own, smiling, holding her tight.
The young girl looked at herself in the mirror, feeling a burst of pride as she adjusted her school uniform. In the distance, a car horn sounded.
“Marie, your friends are here to pick you up!” called her father’s voice. “Hurry up, or you’ll be late!”
She felt herself running forward, happy, springing forward through classrooms and parks, family gatherings and children’s parties. Until she fell over.
The pain started slowly.
Then it grew.
She remembered shivering, from cold or dear she didn’t quite know, as the doctors shone lights in her eyes.
Father looked scared. He leaned over the hospital bed and stroked her hair, kissing her cheek and saying, “Everything will be alright, petite fleur, I promise.”
She remembered the tears in his eyes.
She remembered the sharp, hard needles. The Doctor said the medicine would make her feel better, but there was so much pain – so much, she screamed and screamed, but they still kept pushing the needles into her.
Then it didn’t hurt so much. Everything became fuzzy. Her whole body felt so tired. So heavy. The darkness was pushing her chest down. She couldn’t breathe. She felt the panic rise – too late! There was nothing left, and the darkness was pulling her in.
Galanos awoke with a gasp, flailing around until her groping hands recognized a wall and the sides of a small, hard bed.
“What the f-”
“It’s alright, Detective Galanos, you’re safe. Officer Molan found you and called for medical help. You’re back at the station.”
Galanos rubbed her eyes, her vision swimming until she finally recognized the worried face of Rodrigue, the station Captain for Baltimore Northeast.
“Cap-,” croaked Galanos. “How long was I out?”
“Almost a whole day. Considering it’s the most you’ve slept in months, it’s probably a good thing.”
“But what actually happened? I remember there was a shooting, and a locket of hair, then everything went…”
“I believe I can answer that question,” came a familiar voice, and Galanos frowned as Michael Ivonak stepped out of the haze surrounding her vision.
“You have, unfortunately, stumbled across a product that Nash Engineering was working on,” continued Michael, his smile as cold and bare as the infirmary walls.
“What was it?” rasped the detective.
“Since the complexities of quantum entanglement as applied to organic chemistry would probably take too long to explain, I’ll keep it simple. It’s a prototype chemical treatment discovered largely by accident, one that restructures brain connections to allow the simulated experience of another mind. We’ve codenamed it the Archetype project.”
Galanos coughed and reached into her coat for an energy drink. Finding nothing, she sighed and glared at Ivonak.
“Those memories I saw; that was D’Courcy’s daughter, wasn’t it?”
“Correct,” nodded Michael. “D’Courcy applied to have the locket of his daughter’s hair given the Archetype treatment after she died of cancer. When we refused he must have reached out to VOC to get his hands on the prototypes.”
“Which leads us to our current difficult situation,” interrupted Captain Rodrigue. “You have, technically, come into possession of corporate information worth billions, after failing to follow correct procedure. While the precinct is liable for a very hefty lawsuit, Mr Ivonak has been very impressed by how quickly you found VOC and instead offered a generous compromise, one that would help Nash Engineering regain their lost-“”
“Oh no,” groaned Galanos, pulling herself up on wobbly legs. “I can see where this is going and if you think-”
“I know that you are going to help the precinct by volunteering to do this,” continued Rodrigue firmly. “Until further notice, you are being taken off your current case load and assigned to retrieving the lost Archetype samples.”
“You bastard,” spat Galanos. “What did he offer? A corporate sponsorship program?”
“Details, detective, mere details,” replied Ivonak. “You need to focus on finding our stolen property. Swing by the Nash Engineering offices when you’ve recovered and I’ll fill you in.”
Michael winked as he turned to the door.
“I look forward to working with you, partner,” he called over his shoulder.
Galanos flopped back on to the hard infirmary bed and clenched her teeth.
What’s really going on at Nash Engineering?
Whatever it is, I intend to find out.
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